Shock Treatment

This movie does match and surpass "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" in many ways. You can tell that Richard O'Brien and the film's producers had a bigger budget to work with. The songs are a match to the original (same song writer, same style...). Visually, a little too heavy on the reds, but this WAS 1981, after all. This movie will be enjoyed by those who will get the Rocky Horror references that are scattered throughout. Too bad Barry Bostwick and Susan Sarandon weren't there to provide a little more continuity to their characters. Jessica Harper does a great job though, she appeared in several off-beat movies in the 70s ("Phantom Of The Paradise" and "Suspiria" spring to mind) so playing in a Richard O'Brien movie was not too much of a stretch for her it seems. This sequel was, to me, a lot sexier than RHPS. The original seemed to center on campiness and shock value, it's here as well, but there is a lot more eye-candy in this sequel.

I'm still waiting for a Richard O'Brien / John Waters musical collaboration. Imagine the possibilities!

"Shock Treatment", aside from being a hellava lot of fun, seems to be Richard O'Brien's dig at the whole RHPS phenomenon.

Forget about this being a RHPS sequel. It's not. The whole tone is different. RHPS was an affectionate salute to B-science fiction movies of the 50's married to the seventies punk rock movement. "Shock Treatment", if it is related to RHPS at all, is a satire of the whole RHPS fan culture. Consider: "Shock Treatment" takes place in a TV studio where the audience lives 24/7. They live for the highs received from Denton TV, yet are a pretty conservative lot on the whole. Isn't that like the typical RHPS audience where straight laced Brad and Janet types go to the show, enjoy the freakiness for two hours, then go back to their normal, suburban lives? "Shock Treatment" goes to great lengths to satirize the horrors of suburbanity, and the costumed entertainers they worship. The most blatant example? Two of the main characters, who profess to be doctors, turn out to be character actors. Character actors who have great fun in costume and in the end, drive off into the sunset, in a cool new car, back to suburban normalcy.

And you know what? I have barely scratched the surface of what makes "Shock Treatment" so clever. If you've read anything recent written about it, you know the film is a huge piss take on reality television, and a prescient(by over 20 years)parody of our current culture which makes stars of...well, whomever the TV industry, film industry, and Hollywood publicists tell us we should think of as stars. Paris Hilton? Vin Diesel? Even Jude Law. Did we discover these people? No, they were foisted upon us,we were TOLD they were stars, much as Janet is in "Shock Treatment". When Janet wakes up and realizes she wants her real life back, another cute chick is pimped up and easily accepted.

"Shock Treatment" is a very smart movie that works on the intellectual level RHPS did not. Hey, I love RHPS, but it operates from a gut, instinctual level. "Shock Treatment", if you give it a chance, will make you think about the media's grip on society, make you take a second look at the "stars" adorning the covers of magazines such as Entertainemt Weekly, give you a whole new take on the audiences lining up for RHPS every Halloween (unlike the 80's when we went every month or weekend), and, having been made in 1981 (!) add no surprise to the fact that Richard O'Brien is a prescient futurist who made a killing in the stock market.

Heck, I haven't even talked about the fact that "Shock Treatment"s use of primary colors, editing, and music video style sequences, predates the birth of MTV by at least a year. This movie could be called a template for the 80's music video boom.

Lastly, I have to comment on one facet which will either a) draw RHPS fans and non fans to check this move out or b) disregard this entire review. I absolutely, unequivocally, LOVE the music in this movie. Every song is fun in the best tradition of the short lived "rock musical" genre (I often sing a somewhat edited version of "Lullaby" to my kids at bedtime)and, on screen, every song is presented with a strong sense of atmosphere. Come to think of it, this IS "Shock Treatment"s greatest commonality to RHPS, except in RHPS, the atmosphere was dark and cluttered, in "Shock Treatment", it's bright and sterile. Two different settings. Two different themes. Both brilliantly achieved.

Shock Treatment (or Shocky as the few fans call it) is considerably more tame than it's predecessor The Rocky Horror Picture Show but no less entertaining. The songs are catchy, the plot is unique (but it does take a few watchings to understand EVERYTHING), and it makes you think about the amount of time you spend watching television. All in all a movie worth watching. Feel free to contact me and I will discuss it in more detail.

There is a reason "Shock Treatment" is as obscure and reviled as it is - it refuses to cater to its predecessor's mammoth cult. The film ditches the previous film's camp value and opts instead for (shock horror!) satire. Having much in common with the superb "Melvin and Howard", "Shock Treatment" is a scathing satire of the manipulating powers of television and eerily preceeds the recent onslaught of soap opera-style reality TV shows. While a million "Rocky" fans continue to bemoan the fact it is bereft of Tim Curry hamming it up or even a mere hint of sexual androgyny, they are simply not seeing the film for what it is - a more intelligent and mature film, and, in my opinion, a superior one.

Firstly, the presence of the amazing Jessica Harper immediately cancels out any chance of missing Susan Sarandon. Though Sarandon was sexy, she couldn't sing. Harper on the other hand is both extraordinarily beautiful as well as being an amazing vocalist, having already proved this in De Palma's "Phantom of the Paradise" (a campy film much in the vein of "Rocky Horror", but better in all departments). Harper's solos are show-stoppers and she makes Janet's journey from girl next door to knockout sex symbol wholly credible. De Young is also a better performer than Barry Bostwick, while Curry's camp value is somewhat supplanted by Humphries in a rare non-Australian film appearance. My only complaint is that Nell Campbell, who is almost unrecognizable and looks simply amazing in the film, is tragically underused.

Technically the film is something of an achievement, from the colorful sets, lighting and costume design, right down to the camera work (check out the opening long shot). Visually the film makes "Rocky Horror" seem like a dimly-lit Z-grade Hammer flick. The soundtrack is another component of the film that doesn't receive the attention it deserves, being much more diverse and mature in terms of the musical ground covered. From the country-tinged "Bitchin' in the Kitchen", the discofied "Me of Me" to the punk-lite "Breaking Out", the songwriting is more ambitious this time around but is nevertheless equally successful. Particular highlights include the sombre "Lullaby" (a wonderful sequence which was undoubtedly an influence on music videos in the decades to come) and Harper's brilliant rendition of "Looking For Trade".

"Shock Treatment" was a definite miscalculation, too ambitious to appeal to the "Rocky" crowd and not campy or funny enough to attract any cults of its own (audiences dressing up in hospital gear? I think not), yet on its own merits it is a far superior film. So for now, as the film awaits its belated DVD release, "Shock Treatment" continues to roam the sullen void of cult film that failed to find a cult.

As people have said, this film got a horribly bad rap, and made very little money. The reason, as people have also said, is that it was expected to be in the same vein as RHPS, which it simply was not. Sure, it had Richard O'Brien's trademark musical style and whimsy, but it wasn't the campy kitsch people were expecting. It was, in fact, an intellectual movie with a serious message, a brilliant satire of life in the late 20th century. O'Brien takes jabs at the hallmarks of the decline of modern Western civilisation; conformity, machismo, brainwashing, and the absurdity of the "American Dream".

The plot can be a little hard to discern on the first viewing, but, as with many great intellectual films, more nuances of what O'Brien is trying to say are picked up with each subsequent viewing. The film is certainly surreal, to say the least; and I would suspect psychedelics were somehow involved in the writing of the script. Denton, the picaresque happy U.S. everytown, is actually just a television studio; and all the residents are characters on television shows or are in the audience. Enter Brad and Janet, who, after experiencing the "horrors" of RHPS, are having marital difficulties. This works perfectly into the plan of a mysterious fast food magnate, who intends to steal Janet away from her husband and use her to promote his business. He conspires to have Brad locked up in the local mental hospital/soap opera, while promoting Janet as a new bombshell sensation, and taking the whole town under his thumb.

In short, if you're looking for more of RHPS, you will be sorely disappointed. But if you want a thought-provoking yet whimsical, tongue-in-cheek attack on all that is mind-numbing and soul crushing in our modern world, definately check this film out. Jonathan Swift would be proud.